It has been a long time since the last post, I know. I said it would stop only for a month and they have been almost 4 ! But don´t think I have been inactive. After we submitted the Europan Architectural Competition, that almost finishes with my patience and broke down my computer, I jumped into a food photography workshop with Aiala Hernando, she is great teacher!. And now I am improving my cooking skills, I will share with you any interesting founding. And last but not least... The BudMaaS Kitchen has changed!!

With this change I want to fix the visualization problems some of you had with the old web. The biggest improvement is the comment button. Now you can leave a comment in the recipe, this ways it would be easier to solve any question or suggestion you might have. I wait for your comments!

Other little change is the blogs approach. I want that the content of it goes beyond my favorite recipes or new founding. I would like this space to be a place were to share part of the wide Spanish gastronomy. I will try to share traditional recipes with a new twist. For this new enterprise I would like to ask for your help. If you have a favorite recipe from your family and you would like to share I would love to cook it, photograph it and publish it on the blog, giving you the credit of the recipe, of course. I am aware of the difficulty of this approach, since the blog has a reduced audience, but I am sure you will end up helping me!

So after almost a month of well deserved holidays back home with my family, it is time to come home, to Germany ( it sounds weird to me call Germany home, but so it is for the moment), to routine, and the best of all, to the kitchen!

As I still don't have n of your suggestions I would like to start this new phase with a recipe of a great cook and wonderful person that I have a lot of affection for, Juana. She is Jose's grandma (he is the other half of TBMK). She prepares the best pie crust ever, I will teach you when I cook Empanadillas. She has a great and quite messy collection of recipes ( she always says that has been very ambitions and collected any recipe she found), and all her family is trying to organice all this recipes. I have joint the venture and this is Juana's "Tortada Jumillana" , a kind of almond cake with meringue topping.

The recipe I have written from her original might not be exactly the same, for Juana the best way to indicate an amount of an ingredient is.... ¡ as much as the whole can hold !.So I have given a bit more accurate ingredients measurements.

In a big bowl whisk together the egg yolks with the sugar until the mixture turns creamy and pale.

Whisk the egg whites until foamy and picks form.

In smaller bowl combine the flour, grinder almond and lemon zest. Pour it over the egg yolk and sugar mixture and whisk to combine. Add the olive oil and mix again.

Add the foamy egg-whites to the mixture by spoonful, one at a time, trying not to lose so much air from the egg-whites.

Once all the ingredients are combined, grease a rectangular form with a bit of olive oil and pour the mixture in it. Bake it at 180ºC for 20 minutes, until the sponge cake is baked.

Take it out from the oven and allow to cool down at room temperature.

While the sponge cake is in the oven, prepare the Amaretto syrup. Prepare a little bouquet with the fruit zest and the cinnamon stick. Bring the water, sugar and bouquet to a boil and once the mixture is boiling remove it from heat, cover it and let cool down to room temperature. Once the syrup is cold add the Amaretto to taste.

While the sponge cake and the syrup cool down, prepare the meringue. Rub the interior of your whisking bowl with lemon. Whisk the egg-whites strongly until foamy and strong picks form. Then add some drops of white wine vinegar and keep whisking. The vinegar acidity will help to keep the meringue strong. Add the sugar one spoon at a time, whisking in between until the meringue is sweet and glossy.

Once the cake is cold, cut it into aprox. 6cm squares. Pour over each portion a the syrup, top it with a meringue cloud and garnish it with some almond flakes.